Exploring the Text

1. What is the central image of the poem? What are the secondary images? How did William Carlos Williams create the imagery in this very short poem?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - What is the central image of the poem? What are the secondary images? How did William Carlos Williams create the imagery in this very short poem?
2. Do you consider “The Great Figure” literal or figurative—or a little bit of both? Explain your answer by describing which aspects of the poem are figurative and which are literal.

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Do you consider “The Great Figure” literal or figurative—or a little bit of both? Explain your answer by describing which aspects of the poem are figurative and which are literal.
3. What expectations does the poem’s title, “The Great Figure,” create? In what ways are those expectations met in the poem? In what ways are they defied?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - What expectations does the poem’s title, “The Great Figure,” create? In what ways are those expectations met in the poem? In what ways are they defied?
4. Compare this poem to Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (p. 1074). Both examine “found” moments. How are the poems the same? How are they different?

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - Compare this poem to Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (p. 1074). Both examine “found” moments. How are the poems the same? How are they different?
5. According to Williams’s autobiography, he was on his way to visit the painter Marsden Hartley when he “heard a great clatter of bells and the roar of a fire engine passing the end of the street down Ninth Avenue. [He] turned just in time to see a golden figure 5 on a red background flash by. The impression was so sudden and forceful that [he] took a piece of paper out of [his] pocket and wrote a short poem about it.” Do you see any evidence of a connection in style between Williams and Hartley, whose work is on page 1082? Consider also the work by Charles Demuth featured in the following TalkBack.

   Question

   Exploring the Text: - According to Williams’s autobiography, he was on his way to visit the painter Marsden Hartley when he “heard a great clatter of bells and the roar of a fire engine passing the end of the street down Ninth Avenue. [He] turned just in time to see a golden figure 5 on a red background flash by. The impression was so sudden and forceful that [he] took a piece of paper out of [his] pocket and wrote a short poem about it.” Do you see any evidence of a connection in style between Williams and Hartley, whose work is on page 1082? Consider also the work by Charles Demuth featured in the following TalkBack.